ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
A natatorium project combining the efforts of the City of Liberal, USD 480 and Seward County Community College recently took some steps forward, with much enthusiasm expressed.
The project is still in the early stages, with conversations happening at the past couple Liberal City Commission meetings, and USD 480 Superintendent Dane Richardson and SCCC President Brad Bennett said they are excited to come together for such an undertaking.
“Four or five years ago, I brought all the public entities together and started talking about issues with our current pool, aging infrastructure, some of the fundamental issues that were that we were having with it. Of course, we had different leadership in those positions at USD 480 and the city at the time,” Bennett said. “Then after that I started, I had several town halls. The community came in, and we knew we needed to close our pool, that we had to start working towards a solution. After that, the city and USD 480 started showing an interest in partnering with that. Then we had leadership changes both at the city and USD 480, so it took a while for everyone to get on the same path. In the last year, we’ve gotten really serious about making this with everyone really sitting down and looking at how we could do this, and it’s been a great partnership. It’s been a longtime effort and time to get us to where we are, but we’re excited what the future looks like for the project.”
“I was contacted about the possibility of this project shortly after I started at USD 480. This is an opportunity to provide our students and community with something that is needed without a single entity being stuck with the financial burden of a project of this scale,” Richardson said. “It will have a positive impact on our students and relieve them of the stressors of traveling multiple hours just to practice. We are fortunate to be part of a community that is willing to work together to solve a need in a collaborative and mutually beneficial way. We are excited to work with the city and college to address a need within our community.”
Richardson and Bennett agreed the project would be very beneficial for the community.
“Currently, the Liberal High School swim teams have to find a place just to practice and that requires additional travel that puts a strain on our students and coaches; as well as, our fleet,” Richardson said. “The additional travel time also takes away from time the students could otherwise spend on other things. Having a facility for them to utilize for practices that doesn’t require travel everyday is vital and this will also allow us to host yearly meets for both our boys and girls swim teams and get on the rotation for regional meets in the future.”
“We’re all bringing different things to the table, which is really neat,” Bennett added. “I think we’re stronger doing projects together. The easier, the better for the community. It’s a great partnership, I think, to show our community that we’re trying to be as efficient as we can. We’re trying to work together to meet the needs of our community. That’s a big, big deal. And if you look at the SCCC swimming pool, it’s really not just a community college pool, it’s a community pool. There are some scuba classes that benefit from it, but when you look at the youth swim club team, you look at the high school swim team and our older population, those are the three populations that really benefit from it. That means the pool is serving people in the community from 4 or 5 years old all the way through 70 and 80. I think we’ll see an increase in usage because of a nicer facility. We’ve done a really good job of keeping the pool updated and to the best that we can our staff, but it’s 57 years old now and we can’t keep just patching things up here and there. That’s just the nature of it. So to have a new, nice facility, I think, will be an added bonus. I think I’m excited the most to see our economic development on how many swim meets we can host and those types of events. That’s going to be a true impact to our economy, and I’m excited to see what that looks like. This is meant to be really a community-based project. It’s cool to see the entities come together, because we all serve different stakeholders, and in the day, we’re all serving our area.”
With the project still being in the early stages, there is still much logistical work to do, but will not tamper down the excitement.
“In the process of that we’ve been doing is we’ve for a while now, we’ve had a meeting every week with the architect, us three entities,” Bennett said. “There are many aspects we need, such as a competition-style pool so we can host swim meets, because then we’re impacting economic development and helping small businesses out. With that in mind, we need seating for those patrons who come and watch the swim meets. We need a special entry area for disabled people and their families. These early meetings are about making sure we hit all those bases because when you do a project like this, you want to do it as efficiently as possible. We want to make sure that we have a center that we’re proud of, and that’s why I’m excited. I think those are those, those key features that we look at. For us at SCCC, we’ve got to keep the college students in mind. We’ve got to make sure they have access to it and make sure it’s something they want to use. There’s a lot to unpack, because you have so many different community groups who are going to be using it. We have a big picture design, which will go through a design phase, and more decisions will be made, but I think we have a great concept that will serve so many people.”
“I think this will have a positive impact on our students and community as well as, provide benefits to our staff as this project progresses,” Richardson added. “I would like to see the entities within our community continue to work together to make this project a reality. There are still several steps between where we are now and the finish line, but a continued dialogue and cooperation will yield the best results for all parties involved and USD 480 as a whole.”
